Paris Hilton denies the cocaine in the purse she was carrying was hers

Paris Hilton denied that a purse she was carrying that contained drugs was hers but said other items inside, including asthma medication, credit cards and $1,300 in cash, were hers, according to a police report.

Hilton was arrested Saturday evening with her boyfriend, Las Vegas nightclub operator Cy Waits, who was driving the black SUV stopped by police at 11:22 p.m. Friday after they smelled marijuana.

A police lieutenant found 0.8 grams of cocaine in a purse Hilton was carrying. She is expected to be charged with felony drug possession by Clark County prosecutors, based on the police report.

Hilton and Waits were stopped near the Wynn Hotel, where a crowd gathered as officers prepared to search the Cadillac Escalade for narcotics, according to the report. Hilton told the officer she needed to use the bathroom and was escorted into the hotel.

Lt. Dennis Flynn of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Hilton carried the purse into the hotel, and he had her place it on a table in a security room. As they waited for a female officer to arrive to help with the search, Hilton asked for her purse to get lip balm.

“As she began to open it, I saw a small bindle of what I believed to be cocaine in a clear baggy begin to fall from the purse and into my hand,” Flynn wrote. “I then immediately took the purse and dropped the bindle back on the top,” waiting for another officer to witness the recovery.

The lieutenant asked “Hilton whose cocaine it was, and she said she had not seen it and” thought it was gum, he wrote in the report.

Hilton told him she borrowed the purse, but the cash, asthma medication, credit cards and Zig-Zag wrappers inside were hers, Flynn said.

She allegedly told Flynn that the cosmetics in the purse were not hers. Flynn noted that Zig-Zag wrappers are typically used to roll marijuana cigarettes.

Hilton’s attorney, David Chesnoff, urged people not to “rush to judgment.”

“This matter will be dealt with in the courts, not in the media, and I encourage people not to rush to judgment until all of the facts have been dealt with in a court of law,” he said in a statement.

Waits was booked on a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence.

His attorney, Richard Schonfeld, says the two are innocent and the facts will exonerate them.

richard.winton@latimes.com